To answer your question there are two pieces here:
1) Sunrise is most useful right now in pressuring Democrats, it is quite partisan and does not hold as much sway over Republicans. As such, when the overall situation is less Democrat-leaning, the usefulness of Sunrise is lower overall. Sunrise-candidates will not challenge Republican incumbents so an important mechanism of creating pressure on Democratic officials does not exist.
2) Yes, of course Sunrise could hurt Democrats’ election chances. This was, with regards to moderates and progressives more generally, an active debate after the disappointing (compared to expectations) election in November. One mechanism would be that pressure on Democratic candidates moves them closer to the left to deal with that pressure, which then reduces their election chances. Another mechanism would be that the progressive wing’s perception hurts candidates in moderate/conservative districts. Going forward, a mechanism would be that the Sunrise/progressive agenda is perceived as a partisan overreach that leads to a “punishment” in the mid-terms.
Just to be sure, these are active debates within the party and I am not suggesting that the moderates blaming progressives are always right. I am just saying that when we form a distribution over outcomes of the goodness of Sunrise we should include those mechanisms as well, because they are a plausible part of the overall story (they are explanations held by many people, and the TSM analysis by GG does not refute it). That is a mechanism that pushes the EV of funding Sunrise down.
Thanks!
To answer your question there are two pieces here:
1) Sunrise is most useful right now in pressuring Democrats, it is quite partisan and does not hold as much sway over Republicans. As such, when the overall situation is less Democrat-leaning, the usefulness of Sunrise is lower overall. Sunrise-candidates will not challenge Republican incumbents so an important mechanism of creating pressure on Democratic officials does not exist.
2) Yes, of course Sunrise could hurt Democrats’ election chances. This was, with regards to moderates and progressives more generally, an active debate after the disappointing (compared to expectations) election in November. One mechanism would be that pressure on Democratic candidates moves them closer to the left to deal with that pressure, which then reduces their election chances. Another mechanism would be that the progressive wing’s perception hurts candidates in moderate/conservative districts. Going forward, a mechanism would be that the Sunrise/progressive agenda is perceived as a partisan overreach that leads to a “punishment” in the mid-terms.
Just to be sure, these are active debates within the party and I am not suggesting that the moderates blaming progressives are always right. I am just saying that when we form a distribution over outcomes of the goodness of Sunrise we should include those mechanisms as well, because they are a plausible part of the overall story (they are explanations held by many people, and the TSM analysis by GG does not refute it). That is a mechanism that pushes the EV of funding Sunrise down.